


Visiting Hours

by athena_crikey



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 11:37:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1549181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Win meets an unexpected visitor in the hospital. Post Neverland.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visiting Hours

By the third pot-holder, it has all come back to her. It’s been decades since Win crocheted, and only ever pot-holders, but they’re not difficult and the fingers remember. The yarn moves smoothly over the hook with just the proper amount of thought required – not so much that she wants to pull her hair out, but enough that she can spend eight hours a day beside Fred’s unresponsive form without going mad.

She made dozens upon dozens of these once upon a time – active parishioners for parents meant a childhood busy with women’s sales of work and church fairs. Win regrets now that it looks like she’s suddenly going to have a cabinet–full of the things that she never bothered to learn to knit. She thought about it when Fred joined up, when the lads were shipping out to Norway and the Baltic, but when he received his orders for North Africa she gave it up as pointless and spent what little money she’d saved for wool on feeding him up instead.

“Which I suppose you would have appreciated more in any case,” she says, glancing up. There’s no answer, of course.

The critical care ward doesn’t technically allow guests outside of the 12-4 visiting hours. But Win is already on close terms with all the nurses – was by the end of the first day – and to each one she is exactly the right mix of sweetness and steel to keep her place at her husband’s bedside. They are already beginning to see her as part of the ward’s regular business, and she is careful to keep it that way. Regular gifts of biscuits and sandwiches don’t go amiss, either.

It’s a three-bed ward, and due to some fluke of timing Fred was lucky enough to be placed by the window. She sits with her back to the rest of the ward so she can see out of it, although it only looks out onto the car park. There’s a thin layer of snow on the asphalt today, sliced through here and there by parallel tracks of black.

Win’s watching a car make a hash of backing out of a stall when she notices the nearly transparent reflection of movement in the glass. She looks around to see a pale figure standing to her left at the edge of the drape separating Fred’s bed from the rest of the ward. Her breath catches in her throat and her fingers go slack. She feels her stitch slip off the hook; a moment later she drops the whole bundle of crocheting into her bag and stands.

“Morse!”

The lad turns to look from Fred to her. His eyes are already wide, but they go wider still and he takes a hurried step back, bumps up against the wall behind him and turns to look from her to the exit. “Mrs Thursday, I –”

She’s there in front of him before he can bolt. Trapped, he tries to shrink away from her, to melt away into the wall, all nerves and horror. It pours off him, thick as oil, covering him, choking him.

She reaches right out unhesitatingly and pulls him into a tight embrace.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t –” he bites out miserably. Bless the lad, he’s almost crying.

“Don’t you think anyone in this family blames you for this. Don’t you blame yourself,” she says firmly, somewhere between touched and irked. “Don’t you dare, Endeavour Morse.”

She feels him stiffen at that and releases him, although she keeps one hand on his arm. He’s staring down at her with more surprise than dread now, which is something at least. “Yes, I know, love. Some things, a man has to tell his wife. Don’t worry – your secret’s safe from Joan and Sam.”

He blinks, still looking a bit shell-shocked. She gives him a smile, because he looks like he could do with it, and changes the topic. “They took their time letting you out. I told DCS Bright right off the bat if he was so keen on saving public money they could release you and save the upkeep.”

Morse twitches the corners of his mouth. “It was up to Kidlington to verify my alibi. They dragged their feet a bit – suppose they preferred to blame a DC from Cowley to the ACC. Especially given the charges that will be coming out.” His eyes darken, and Win tightens her grip on her arm. He looks at her in surprise, and she resolves to have him over to dinner more often.

A moment later, his gaze has wandered over her shoulder. It doesn’t return. “How is he?” he asks, gruffly.

Win turns around, crossing her arms over her stomach. She steps closer to the bed, and feels more than sees Morse follow behind. “We don’t know,” she says, eventually. “There was damage to his right lung, and possibly his spine, and a lot of blood loss. He’s woken up a few times – they say that’s good – but he wasn’t really himself. The doctors aren’t very sure. They’re hopeful, though,” she adds, because reflected in the window, the lad looks like he’s swallowed a bottle of cod liver oil.

He nods once slowly, then again, still staring at Fred. Then, suddenly, he turns to her, blue eyes intense. “It wasn’t – it shouldn’t have happened,” he says, words spilling out. “We shouldn’t have been there; we knew it was a trap, we knew there was no back-up.”

Win watches him with steady eyes. She’s never seen him like this before. Fred talks about him like this, such an intense flame, so bright he burns himself. She’s only ever seen the polite, shy lad. “So why were you?” she asks calmly, because he needs her to.

“The missing boy. Tommy Cork. Deare said he had him. And he did,” he adds, scowling.

“Was it you who shot him?” Win asks, tone carefully neutral. Morse looks at her, surprised.

“No,” he says, then blinks thoughtfully. “Perhaps it would have been easier if I had. But as the opportunity wouldn’t have presented itself, it’s probably just as well it didn’t come to that. A young woman whose abuse Deare had been complicit with in the past shot him. Just desserts,” he says, darkly, and Win suddenly has a better idea of why exactly Fred and his young DC walked into a trap without backup after the young boy. And she wonders why, of all the coppers at her and Fred’s anniversary party, and all those who have called or sent cards, the only one who was there by him when he needed them was this lad.

“Why don’t you come and sit with Fred for a while?” she says suddenly, stepping back to stand behind the chair. Morse startles out of his thoughts and looks at her uncertainly. “I –”

“Go on. Give you a chance to rest.”

“I’ve been doing a lot of that lately,” he says, but she can see him wavering.

“Sitting maybe, but resting? Besides, it’ll give me a chance to go down and fetch some tea. I don’t like to leave him alone.” It’s a cunning move; she sees the uncertainty vanish from his eyes, and picks up her purse. “I won’t be long. You should talk to him – the doctors said it was good for him.”

He gives her an odd look at that, one she can’t read, closed and far away. He unfreezes when she turns to go, though, straightens with a jolt. “Oh – Mrs Thursday?”

“Win,” she corrects, raising her eyebrows inquiringly.

“I don’t suppose it would come up, but – they said it was only family allowed in here,” he says, suddenly his usual shy self. “I said I was your nephew.”

“Not very enterprising of you. I would have expected son-in-law.”

He blushes, the first colour she’s see in his pale cheeks. “That would have been… ill-advised. My girlfriend works in the hospital,” he mutters, opening a door into whole new world of questions for a later date. As it is, she gives him a very restrained smile and steps around the drape separating Fred’s bed from the rest of the ward.

On her way out, she sees one of the more senior nurses and stops to discuss the doctor’s schedule and recommendations. It extends, as these conversations tend to, to Fred’s overall condition and care, and by the time they finish more than ten minutes have ticked by. Win steps towards the exit, then pauses and leans back closer to the wall to glance around the curtain.

Morse has pulled the chair to the side of the bed and is sitting with his hands resting on the mattress, fingers woven together. His head is bowed low near Fred’s ear, his eyes closed. For a moment, Win thinks he may be praying. But the ward is quiet, and she can catch his words, recited fluidly from memory.

“He clasps the crag with crooked hands;  
Close to the sun in lonely lands,  
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

“The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;  
He watches from his mountain walls,  
And like a thunderbolt he falls.”

She shakes her head, expression bittersweet, and goes to find herself some tea.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem Morse is reciting is "The Eagle" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson


End file.
